From: chaosium@netcom.com (Chaosium)
Subject: Announcement: Elric!
System: Elric!
Originally-Posted-To: rec.games.frp.announce

[Lynn Willis recently posted the following information on the upcoming Elric! game to rec.games.frp.announce]:

Elric is a new game that covers much of the ground that Stormbringer did. Both use the same general approach to skills and stats, although I like to think that Elric's summaries are simpler, more flexible and more complete. For instance, in Elric you can create a new adventurer using a two-page spread and occasional flips to specific pages. Notes for converting adventurers to Elric are included in the gamemaster chapter. Except for demons and magic generally, the process is mostly transparent. There is an index and definitions of terms, so understanding obscure points should not be so frustrating as Stormbringer occasionally could be. 

Richard Watts contributed an excellent Young Kingdoms chapter to Elric which discusses the nations and areas on the Young Kingdoms map, fills in some biographical details as well and concludes with a comparison of the three forces of the Universe (Chaos, Balance and Law) and of
the pantheons for Chaos and Law. This background chapter agrees entirely with the Young Kingdoms scenario supplements recently published for Stormbringer, Perils of the Young Kingdoms, Sorcerers of Pan Tang and the fine Sea Kings of the Purple Towns.

Every character starts out aligned with one of the three forces of the universe. An adventurer can become an agent either of Chaos or Law, or a Champion of any of the forces. For Champions in particular, considerable benefits accrue as well as inevitable responsibilities - a Chaos Champion becomes quasi-immortal, for instance. Point scores for the three forces exist on the adventurer sheet, and these are regularly increased, but without the drastic consequences of, say, falling Sanity in Call of Cthulhu. The player remains in control of his or her adventurer. Elric is the model: he started out the alienated but traditional ally of Chaos. In later books he swung toward Law, but always with the uneasy understanding that Law unopposed in the plane of the Young Kingdoms would have as dire an effect as unopposed Chaos; Tanelorn and the Balance provided a Middle Way before the cataclysm.

The notion of virtues is eliminated in Elric; it's not found in the saga. Virtues are a balancing mechanic; in Elric the partisans of Law and of the Balance seek better skills instead of magic. (The use of any spell magic, even a Lawful spell, adds points to the Chaos score. Mutability is the proper arena for the Dukes of Disorder.)

There are a number of new tables in this game, including a hand-to-hand fumble table, fumbles for missile weapons, a combat matrix, a summary of significant intervals, definitions of weapons and weapon classes, a considerably larger set of weapon tables, various summary tables for combat, spells, demon abilities and more.

The game expects that fighting will be an important portion of each play session. The interplay of arms, armor, shields and combat mechanics may reward those who study them, yet should not burden those who don't much care. These areas seem to me better detailed than other games I am familiar with, yet require little recourse to other than the combat matrix and the information on the adventurer sheet. An adventurer whose fighting skills are under 100% should practice caution, humility and tiptoeing. There is no upper limit to the percentiles for any skill. Rules in the combat chapter take care of about 30 special cases in fighting, though most people can cheerfully ignore them. Some of them, like the two weapons rule connected with ripostes, can be quite useful to know.

The Stormbringer magic system emphasizes demons in a way that seems to me wholly untrue to the Elric saga and that universe. You can still
summon demons and elementals in Elric but to get something very strong, you'll need higher Power and certain magic point storage spells. The game assumes that sorcerer-adventurers mostly will want to accumulate spells, at least in the beginning. Certain spells are necessary to summon anything.

In Elric, there is a set of personal spells, which represent the major departure of the game from the saga. At various times Elric does cast otherwise unexplained spells; the game's spells are assumed to be of the same tenor. None are powerful in the way that Noose of Flesh is for Myshella, and the combat spells mostly have the effect of raising weapon damage or defense toward normal maximum. These spells are not spectacular or obtrusive, but their casting can get adventurers in trouble if the wrong person figures out what's going on. There are also invocations (pretty much useless unless the deity has some reason to respond to you) and enchantments, which the gamemaster introduces. Enchantments are left-over magical artifacts from the even more magical past, and dozens turn up each year. Some are powerful, many are not; the gamemaster chapter has eight or ten examples of them.

I'll also just mention that there is a GMs chapter that is fairly useful. It contains two scenarios, a Young Kingdoms Digest of stock characters for the keeper, six ready-to-play adventurers, personalities and creatures similar to Stormbringer's (though freshly written and perhaps more interesting) and so on.

The whole is 160 pages for $19.95. The book is jammed with information; unfortunately most of the pictures have been squeezed out. You'll see some of them in Melnibone, which is nearly finished and scheduled for August. An Elric screen and a set of scenarios, The Fate of Fools, rounds out Elric matters for this year. As I write, Elric is about half laid out; Les will probably be done by the 11th. That could get it shipping as early as the 25th of June.

Lynn Willis